MediaSlap blog

The 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show is just days away — it unofficially begins on Tue., Jan. 5 and officially on Thurs. Jan. 7 in Las Vegas, Nevada — and this year is expected to make several technologies popular.

1.) Small laptops experience fragmentation

With the Intel’s new Atom N450 processor, the netbook is taking steps toward becoming less than a poor-performing, undersized laptop.

At the same time, expect all the major notebook manufacturers to introduce laptops with ultra-low-voltage — providing better performance and battery life.

Complicating the situation is the introduction of the smartbook that fits between the netbook and the smartphone. Smartbooks are extra small and portable, offer comparable battery life and eschew x86 processors (goodbye, Intel!) for mobile processors (hello, Qualcomm!), just like e-book readers. They’re expected to be priced more affordable than the netbook (we’re talking $150 to $250).

Two years ago, we had laptops of all shapes and sizes. One year ago, we had netbooks. Now, we’ll have full-powered notebooks, ULV laptops, netbooks and smartbooks. (Not to mention the occasional rumored slate tablet device by a certain company in Cupertino, among others.)

2.) Home theater goes 3D

If you have been to the movies lately you know what a buzz 3D is these days.  Now the experience comes home.

Since CES places such prominence on the home theater segment of consumer electronics, expect to see a number of big-name TV manufacturers placing renewed emphasis on 3D tech for the home. What that means: bigger sets, sales of sophisticated 3D glasses, 3D boxes and a whole lot of (likely overpriced) HDMI cables. Now that the technology has been available for awhile, prices are pushing down — meaning you can soon buy an 82-inch 3D HDTV for less than $2,999. Expect 3D to make a play for your attention.

3.) Brighter, crisper, more flexible displays

Now that we’ve got all these big, interactive screens in our lives — televisions, laptops, smartphones, and so forth — how can we improve on them?

That’s where OLED, or “organic light-emitting diode,” displays come in. Like 3D home theater tech, OLED is nothing new, but it’s plenty expensive. At CES in previous years, Sony and Samsung have outgunned each other in terms of the thinnest and largest OLED displays. Until now, the price has proven too high for all but the wealthiest of early adopters, and durability has always been a concern.

This year, expect OLED (and thin, durable cousin AMOLED, or “active-matrix OLED”) to work its way into many more portable gadgets. The world may not yet be ready for an 82-inch OLED display (though I know a few folks who will make themselves ready), but the three-inch screen on your smartphone? That can certainly be done — meaning brighter, crisper displays are already coming to your favorite electronics.

For several years, manufacturers have been working on ways to offer flexible and/or transparent OLED displays. They’re getting better at it, and the technology has proven itself inexpensive to manufacture. Don’t expect to see any products with the technology at CES, but you might see a prototype (e-book reader, perhaps?) of things to come.

4.) Car tech gets smarter

Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally is scheduled to give a keynote speech at CES this year, and there’s a reason: car tech is back in a big way.

For years, car tech meant making automobiles less hostile to portable technology (remember the 2001 Mazda Protégé MP3?). Now, car makers are realizing that the best way to please folks is to actually make cars smarter and incorporate one’s personal tech life into the vehicle by fully integrating with other decidedly non-car devices.

For Ford, that means plenty of promotion of SYNC, the company’s in-car communications and entertainment system, which was developed in partnership with — you guessed it — Microsoft. Sync incorporates essential services (911 emergency, turn-by-turn GPS directions, weather and traffic info) with hands-free, voice-activated manipulation of phone calls, music, text messaging — even turning your vehicle into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

In other words: your car is now playing nicer with your digital life.

5.) Smartphones get aggressive, tablets get impressive

CES was never really a mobile phone show, but Palm’s success drawing eyeballs for the launch of its Pre smartphone and webOS platform last year told the world that it’s not a half-bad idea to break the rules.

We’ve come a long way in a year’s time. It was barely a year ago that the first Google Android phone (T-Mobile G1) was released, the first touchscreen BlackBerry (Storm) was introduced, and touchscreen smartphones were an expensive novelty.

The mobile market in 2010 will be a cage match. Palm’s already scheduled another press conference — maybe this year they’ll save the company — and with a bit of Apple-like flair, Google has announced a January 5 event that’s expected to be for its Google Nexus One Android-based smartphone for T-Mobile.

Moreover, Dell is rumored to be announcing something mobile — maybe an Android phone, maybe a tablet PC — at CES. And have we mentioned Google Chrome OS yet? Something tells me HTC’s got something in the works.

6.) Eco-friendly everything

All year, manufacturers have been touting their green credentials, from better power efficiency to reducing manufacturing costs to making more environmentally-friendly packaging for their new gadgets (see Dell’s above). For them, it’s not just good for the environment, it’s good business, too.

This year’s CES is making “green” official by scheduling green-specific conferences and green gadget show-and-tells. The show’s governing body, the Consumer Electronics Association, has also promised to buy carbon offsets and donate $50,000 to the Las Vegas police department to invest in electric vehicles.

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Thanks to Andrew J. Nusca, associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet for this CES update.

Augmented reality combines the real world with digitally created images. This technology gives marketers the ability to control their viewers environment using sound and compelling visuals. Doesn’t this sound like a dream come true for advertisers? If the message is compelling and fun it can for for the ad man and the consumer.  This is fun!

One new trend is AR or augmented reality. See our article: http://mediaslap.soundworks.com/2009/09/18/is-augmented-reality-a-good-marketing-tool/

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Five years after Comcast fails in its bid for the Walt Disney Company, Brian L. Roberts again looks to fulfill his long-sought dream to turn his cable company into a major media conglomerate. According to sources with knowledge of the negotiations who request anonymity because talks continue, Comcast negotiates with General Electric to create a separate company that merges Comcast’s programming assets with NBC Universal. With those assets plus cash estimates of $6 billion to $7 billion, Comcast ends up with 51% control of NBC Universal, which G.E. and Vivendi now owns.

If this deal works out Comcast, which already is the biggest owner of cable systems in America, can hold the most significant collection of cable television assets in the entire world that includes popular and profitable channels like USA, Bravo, CNBC and MSNBC. To add pudding to the pie, Comcast also receives the NBC broadcast network. Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, predicts, If Comcast had control over the NBC portfolio, they would be calling the shots for a significant portion of American viewing hours. Frederick W. Moran, a Benchmark Company analyst, estimates that a combination of Comcast and NBC’s properties will blanket the marketplace. To many of us observers this creates quite a radio monopoly.

(from our friend Jim Rose @ http://news.jimroseremembersradio.com/)

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What the heck is sound painting?
The first time I heard the term ‘sound painting’, I thought it was someone mouthing some new-age nonsense.  But now I know Sound Painting is indeed an art.  I’d define it as the blending and layering of effects, music and voices on a canvas – not of sight, but of sound.  If done well, it IS truly a work of art. Sounds morph together seamlessly and the synergistic result is much greater than the singular components.

Sound Painting can make the difference between a well-produced, professional sound track and one that sounds… amateur. Sound effects can be stacked and mixed to create bigger-than-life results. Let’s say you want the sound of a basketball dribbled and then slam-dunked through a sheetrock wall – There is no stock sound effect for that! In this scenario, Sound Painting becomes the audio-equivalent of visual special effects.

The “painting” of sound adds emotional context to a project. For example, mute the sound at home or cover your ears in the theatre next time you see a scary movie.  If you ‘hear no evil’, the movie is no longer scary. Also try holding your ears in a dramatic, action-packed movie scene and watch it suddenly go flat!

A radio or TV commercial should evoke emotion just like a movie. However, a commercial is actually more challenging than a movie because of time constraints. Take a well written script, some good actors, and then season the soundtrack with a sound painting – It’s a recipe that can meet the challenge presented in the ad market.

Our senior engineer at Sound Works, Mark Meyer, is a veteran at the art of Sound Painting.  He can take multiple cuts of stock library music, mix and layer them, and produce what sounds like a custom music score. Mark is just as skilled at building custom sound effects. I’ve seen him take a recorder into the field to get just the right sound – I call him our mad scientist of sound. I’ve also seen clients describe how they want the sound track to feel and then turn Mark loose to create his Sound Painting – The results are astonishing!

How will you paint your next production? Why not create a sound painting?

Examples
This is a commercial done for Time Warner Cable. The audio was brought with only noisy on camera sound. We made the Astronaut sound like a real Astronaut and added every footstep, the pizza box drop sound … and even the banging against the door.

Here is a commercial done for REMCO to attract household large item rentals. Is that exciting? No! But, what if we add personality to the appliances? THAT could be fun.

examples from Sound Works

by Mark Meyer

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